


Soothing Tensions

by Loxxlay



Series: Brothers of Habit (grandthorki) [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Brother Feels, Brotherly Angst, Extremely Dubious Consent, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Incest, M/M, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 05:34:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15857256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loxxlay/pseuds/Loxxlay
Summary: Thor and Loki argue themselves into misery, and the Grandmaster mediates.





	Soothing Tensions

**Author's Note:**

> This was an [anonymous prompt](http://loxxxlay.tumblr.com/post/177138442594/im-an-expert-at-mediating-conflict-grandmaster) from tumblr: "I'm an expert at mediating conflict + grandmaster trying to 'work through' thor and loki's issues." A shout out to [zombiecheetah](http://zombiecheetah.tumblr.com/) for helping me with the first scene, thanks! Also thank you to [veliseraptor](http://veliseraptor.tumblr.com/) both for inspiration for the frostmaster pairing in general and for helping me get my brain together enough to figure out a title lol. You both are great!!! <3
> 
> You have probably already read this if you follow me on tumblr, so sorry if you were hoping for a new fic/update T_T and I have not given up on my other WIPs. I'm working on them atm between school things. Seasonal depression put me on hiatus for the summer, so I had to write something else to get back into the swing of things! Sorry for the long wait. T_T 
> 
> If you are new to grandthorki, I write **Thor and Loki as having a platonic relationship only before coming across the Grandmaster**. I love thorki too, but this is not true thorki; this is written as unhealthy, dubious incest lol. -shame intensifies- ... ENJOY!

Thor hated himself with the intensity of a million burning suns.

It wasn’t a new hatred. Even before Sakaar, what-if’s and if-only’s would fill barren nights to the brim. There were a thousand words he could’ve said the night Loki fell from the Bi-Frost (the night he _let go_ ), and when Loki came back, ghostly and hateful and raging, there were a thousand paths Thor could’ve taken. The words that were actually spoken, the paths that were actually taken—they’d been the wrong ones.

In the aftermath of hindsight, Thor had learned to stitch self-loathing into the fabric of his being. Only its intensity was changing now. Sakaar was strengthening it into something suffocating and raw, and it was killing him. It was bleeding the life out of him.

“Loki, please,” he said, resting his cheek upon smooth, unrelenting metal. “Please just open the door.”

There was no click of the lock or twist of the doorknob. No sound from within the bathroom at all.

Unsurprised, Thor swallowed his disappointment. Saliva ran thick and stubborn down the back of his throat. “I just want to talk to you,” he said. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

Beyond the door, Loki laughed in shrill breaths that sounded crazed. “Oh? Then pray tell, Thor—how _did_ you mean it? Tell me. Tell me what other conclusion could possibly be drawn—”

“I'm—”

“—because I thought your meaning was clear enough. Explicitly clear even. _We’re not really brothers._ Isn’t that right? Isn’t that exactly what you said, word for word?”

Thor squeezed his eye shut. His heart pumped the self-loathing through his veins where it poisoned every nerve, every tense muscle, every pass of air through his lungs. It was drowning him. Smothering him. “I didn’t mean it,” he tried weakly. “I just said it to—I thought it would help.”

“Well, you thought _wrong_.”

“Loki, please, just—”

“Leave me alone,” Loki hissed.

Thor didn’t move. “If you come out, we can—”

“Leave me _alone!_ ”

A weight slammed into the door. The force of it bellowed, loud and fierce, and the metal trembled against Thor’s cheek. Thor barely stopped himself from wincing.

“Isn’t it enough?” Loki shouted on the other side. “Isn’t it enough that you get to fuck me? That you get to touch me and hold me and sleep next to me every night? That you can ask me anything you like and he’ll make me answer? This is so ideal for you. You can take whatever you want, you have _everything_ you’ve ever hoped for, and you still won’t give me a damned ten minutes to myself?”

“Loki,” Thor choked. “I don’t want—I’ve _never_ wanted—I—I _hate_ that you have to—”

“Then leave me alone. Leave me _the fuck_ alone. _I don’t want you here._ ”

Thor couldn’t breathe. He dug his fingers into his scalp and tore at strands of his hair. The pain was needlelike. Grounding. He used every last ounce of it to hold himself together, to force air through his lungs, to keep his heart beating. Vaguely, he was aware of his loud, quick gasps. Vaguely, he recognized the faint sound of Loki’s ragged breathing.

Loki hadn’t meant any of it. Thor knew that, somewhere, somehow, even if he couldn’t believe it yet.

“Just open the door,” he said into his hands. “Let me see you’re alright, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

“No, you won't. You never do.”

“I _will_. I promise.”

Loki struck the door again, but the sound was weaker this time. More subdued. “I hate you,” he cried. “I fucking hate you.”

Before Thor could truly let those words sink deep into his heart, there was the sound of a door sliding open. Not the bathroom door. No, that was different from the sound of their bedroom door, and from the bottom of his heart, Thor could distinguish between the two. Each hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Goosebumps raised along his bare arms, and the back of his throat dried.

Without looking, he could hear the familiar gait of footsteps and the swish of robes.

Thor’s senses flared razor sharp, his ears rang with crisp clarity, and still, everything seemed to quiet. His lungs had stopped screeching for air, his heart had stopped hammering, and—and even Loki’s breathing had evened from inside the bathroom.

“Oh? What’s going on here?” the Grandmaster’s voice called.

He stopped a few paces in front of Thor, and Thor stared blankly at his grey pants.

The Grandmaster chuckled. “You look, well, not good there, Sparkles. Not good at all. You wanna—you wanna tell me why you’re sitting on the floor out here, while my lovely pet is—presumably, of course—locked up in there?” A wave of his hand towards the bathroom.

And suddenly none of it mattered. The shouting, the hurt, the loathing—all of it shriveled into a single, basic need: to survive. Thor swallowed the lump in his throat and wiped any remnant of tears from his face. He met the Grandmaster’s gaze with a protective urge made of steel. “We’re fine,” he lied, careful to keep his voice soft and neutral. “We were just talking while he washed.”

“Oh, Sparkles, don’t be like that. You think I couldn’t hear you yelling at each other from all the way down the hall?” The Grandmaster clucked his tongue in disapproval as he stepped closer. “Lo Lo,” he said while rapping his knuckles against the door. “It’s time to come out, dear. Open up.”

Naturally Loki answered with silence.

Thor heaved a breath. Whatever Loki thought of him, they were still allies in this, and Thor would be damned if he didn’t rise to defend his brother now. “Grandmaster,” he said. He kept his head bowed, because if he looked into those sick eyes, he would only want to claw them out. “Loki is—he’s very angry with me. I think it’d be best if we left him alone for at least a few minutes.”

The Grandmaster hummed in a disappointment that was so exaggerated it sounded almost mocking. “Oh, well, I _was_ going to spend a nice evening with the two of you, but, well. If he wants to be left alone, then there’s not much to be done about it, I suppose. We’ll just have to find something else to do.”

In his surprise, Thor’s eye shot up to stare at the Grandmaster. “Really?” he breathed, barely daring to hope.

“Really, really.” The smile on the Grandmaster’s face was sharp and unforgiving. “After all, they are throwing a party on that fancy new ship I bought. Lots of food, lots of drinks. You’d be up for that, wouldn’t you, Sparkles?”

Thor stiffened. It hadn’t taken long to learn that a party was synonymous with an orgy. Or that food and drink were synonymous with drugs. He remembered the last “party” in short flashes: his lips tangled in the mouth of something mostly humanoid. Heat surging through his cock at the touch of someone’s tongue between his thighs. The image a tentacle, not a tongue. Staring at trails of blood leaking down his legs and aching, aching, _aching_ —

A shudder ran through him. “Yes,” he heard himself say. “I’ll do it.” He took the Grandmaster’s offered hand and hauled himself to his feet. Anything was better than Loki blaming him or, worse, claiming that he _wanted_ this.

Anything was better than Loki hating him.

“I was thinking,” the Grandmaster said as he led them across the room, “that if Lo Lo’s stepping this one out, then maybe we could focus a bit more on you for a change, hmm? Try something different? Maybe a little wager?” His hand closed around Thor’s shoulder, and fingers dug into his collarbone. “What’s the record, hmm? How many times can an Asgardian come in one night—oh, no, actually don’t tell me, that’ll ruin the surprise.”

Thor was trembling hard enough that he thought he might be sick. It was the blessed sound of the doorknob rattling and the bathroom door creaking open that saved him.

He looked over his shoulder at his brother. The corners of Loki’s eyes were puffy and red, and his hands were shaking at his sides. He was hovering in the doorframe, one foot in the bathroom, one foot out, and he wasn’t looking at Thor. Thor wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or afraid.

“Oh?” the Grandmaster said. “Change of heart, darling?”

Loki’s lips pressed together. “Don’t go.”

“Hmm, but, see, you seemed pretty set on us leaving a few seconds ago. And wouldn’t it be better that way? To give you some time to yourself? Let you sort things out?”

_Just say yes,_ Thor thought, even as his stomach twisted and writhed. _Say yes. I can take it._

“But then I’d be lonely,” Loki said instead, and Thor’s heart fell. “Please, Grandmaster, stay here. Let it be just the three of us tonight. I promise I’ll be good.”

“Aww, sweet thing, I knew you’d feel left out, I just knew it,” the Grandmaster said as he sauntered over and wrapped Loki in patronizing arms. “Oh, I’m so relieved. You know how, uh, how put-out I get when people ignore me. I was really worried that I’d have to—oh, well, it doesn’t matter now.”

As the Grandmaster planted a kiss to his brother’s cheek, Loki met Thor’s gaze and glared with the intensity of a million burning suns.

And Thor realized that the Grandmaster had never intended to bring him to a party or to drug him senseless or to count how many times he could come. No. Thor was only a bargaining chip. An axe hanging over Loki’s head. A burden heaped on his shoulders, and there was nothing Thor could do to lessen his weight, and Loki hated him for it.

Guilt ate away at him anew.

...

“So what’s this, uh, what’s this this whole thing between you two about anyway?”

Loki was lying naked in the Grandmaster’s lap. He’d had his ten minutes free of Thor—and had spent them in the Grandmaster’s care instead. The skin between his thighs still felt sticky and dirty, and his legs were spread for Thor to see the mess--Thor, who sat quietly on the other side of the bed with his head ducked and the fire of guilt in his one eye.

And Loki knew something awful was coming. He knew it in the marrow of his bones, and he was so tired, so afraid, and _damn Thor_ for saying what he’d said, _damn Thor_ for not leaving well enough alone.

He forced himself to smile. “It was nothing serious,” he said. “Hardly worth mentioning. In fact, I’m over it already.”

“Loki. Sweetheart.” Fingers dragged through Loki’s hair at just the right strength, just the right speed, to have him melting in the Grandmaster’s arms. “I want to help,” the Grandmaster said. “See, I’m an _expert_ at mediating conflict, and—well, I just don’t like seeing either of you so sad.”

“We’re not sad,” Loki murmured. His head leaned to the side and he pressed his lips to the Grandmaster’s neck. Maybe it was the Grandmaster’s touch seeping into him and lulling him into a docile mood, or maybe it was just easier not to fight sometimes—to seek it out as if it was exactly what he wanted, what he craved. Whatever it was, Loki sighed happily as the Grandmaster’s fingers curled around his chin—before they angled his head toward his brother.

Thor’s single eye was lacking in its usual light, and the set of his face hung neutral and hollow. “I don’t know,” the Grandmaster hummed. “He looks pretty sad to me. Don’t you, Sparkles?”

Loki glared at Thor because it was easier to hate him than it was to hate the Grandmaster. The flame from before flickered inside of him, bitter and scornful (and hurt, so very hurt). “Yes, Thor,” he said, falsely sweet. “Why don’t you tell us what's bothering you? Why don’t you explain exactly what happened to make you so sad?”

Thor’s gaze dropped to his hands in his lap. For a long moment, he said nothing—long enough that Loki could feel impatience radiating from the Grandmaster with every beat of silence.

At last, Thor shrugged his shoulders. “I said something . . . insensitive.”

“Aww, don’t be so hard on yourself,” the Grandmaster said as he resumed stroking Loki’s hair. “I'm sure it wasn't that bad.”

This time, Thor met Loki’s gaze when he spoke. “No,” he said, gently. Kindly. “It was worse.”

Loki’s lips thinned, and he looked away.

“Well, let’s hear it. Let’s, uh, try to work this out. What’d you say that was so awful, dear?” The Grandmaster waited, but Thor’s jaw clenched shut. “Alright. How about this? You tell me what happened, and I’ll, uh, I'll keep my hands off both of you for the rest of the night. I know how much you’d like that. You don’t need to pretend.”

Right away, Loki recognized all the loopholes in the offer; Thor didn’t. His eye traveled over Loki’s body, naked and exposed, and it hovered over the hand in Loki’s hair and the fingers curled around his arm. His jaw clenched, and his one eye rose to meet the Grandmaster’s. Resigned and determined. Because Thor didn’t realize there were some things worse than being touched.

“I said that we weren’t brothers,” Thor explained. “I didn't--I didn't mean it.” A ragged breath tore through his throat, and he drove the palm of his hand against his mouth. His eye squeezed shut, and Loki almost forgave him. Almost. “Loki was . . . He didn’t like that we . . .”

Thor hesitated, and the Grandmaster perked, his chest pressing forward into Loki’s back. “Come on now, don’t be shy,” he said. “Speak your mind.”

Thor’s neck bobbed with an uncomfortable swallow. “Where we come from,” he said, quiet and slow, “it’s wrong for us to . . . to have sex. As brothers. Our . . . our friends--they would be horrified to know that we . . .” He swallowed again, fiddled with his hands. “Loki was upset about it, and--and it just slipped out. I didn’t mean it. I thought it would help, but I never _believed_ it—”

Loki narrowed his eyes. “You thought _that_ was what I wanted to hear,” he hissed. “Right after I confided in you. You thought I’d want nothing more than to be _disowned_.”

Thor's entire body flinched.

“Hey, hey, hey,” the Grandmaster said. “Calm down, there’s no need to be rude. How about we just focus on finding a solution here, hmm?” He shifted his hand from Loki’s hair to brush the pads of his fingers across Loki’s jaw instead.

Loki noticed Thor’s eye lock dangerously onto the Grandmaster’s hands, but the touch was so hypnotic and mesmerizing that he couldn’t think of what to do about it.

“So let me see if I got this straight,” the Grandmaster said. “Loki was feeling bad about all the sex, because, you know, brothers, incest, and all that. And you--you tried to make him feel better by reminding him that you’re _not_ brothers?”

Thor winced. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, no, no. You don’t need to explain yourself, Sparkles.” The Grandmaster’s chest shook with a small laugh, and something about it sounded real and sincere in a way that so few quirks of his personality did.  “I actually, uh--well, I admire your ingenuity. In the heat of the moment, too. An interesting insight.”

He paused, as if to let the giddiness in his breath die down. Mindless hands lowered from Loki’s jaw to stroke along his bare chest, fingers dancing along the edge of his nipples. Loki’s breathing sharpened, and he barely suppressed a moan.

“But, you see, here’s the problem,” the Grandmaster went on. “You’ve hurt my little Lo Lo’s feelings, and well. We can’t have that.”

“You said you wouldn’t touch us. That was the deal,” Thor growled.

“Huh. I did say that, didn’t I?”

The Grandmaster removed his hands from Loki’s body and presented them palm-first to Thor. For a moment, Thor looked relieved.

Then something in the air snapped.

Waves of power vibrated through the room, filling Loki’s chest with nausea and draining his lungs of oxygen. He gasped for breath. The very atmosphere was electric and sharp; it smelled of burning wood, of billows of smoke, of the full rage of a forest fire, and Loki thought it would smother him in its brilliance.

Just as quickly, it was gone.

Loki’s vision cleared, and he caught the image of Thor: face cleared of all strain, lips parted, eye glazed over. Then Thor was diving for him and pressing his lips against Loki’s and pinning his wrists to the mattress.

It was so startling, so sudden, that Loki couldn’t help but struggle. He twisted his head sideways, bucked his hips, and _flailed_ \--but Thor simply crushed him with his weight and pressed sloppy kisses to his jaw, and there was nothing Loki could do, no way to fight. Something was draining his strength, rendering his limbs pliant. It was faint, but it was the same burning smell, the same sharp tang, and Loki realized--helplessly, hopelessly--that the Grandmaster’s power was bleeding into him, just as it had stolen Thor’s will.

“Grandmaster, please,” Loki begged.

Thor was marking his neck, and each kiss throbbed and burned in his throat.

“Relax, sweetie. Just relax,” the Grandmaster said. “I’m only trying to open your mind a bit. Get you to consider all the possibilities. Then maybe you’ll realize that Thor here kinda has a point?”

Loki started. “Wh-what?”

“It’s basic logic,” the Grandmaster said. “Common sense. See, if he was really your brother, would he be doing this?”

And suddenly Thor was groping him. His fingers curled around Loki’s cock and they squeezed and Loki was writhing, moaning, _burning._ Thor shifted his weight, and then his lips were mouthing across Loki’s chest, his tongue ghosting over Loki’s nipples. Loki’s back arched. He closed his eyes and sealed his lips shut and tried not to listen, because this wouldn’t break him. He wouldn’t let it.

The Grandmaster leaned forward, his breath hot against the nape of Loki’s neck. “Would a real brother be kissing you? Touching you? Taking such good care of you?”

Thor shifted again--his mouth descended Loki's stomach.

Loki braced himself, but nothing could prepare him for the sheer pleasure that rioted in his body. Thor’s mouth was warm and wet and _eager_ around his cock. His head bobbed up and down, up and down, and Loki couldn’t help but thrust his hips forward with each jolt of fire through his body. Too hard, and Thor’s throat spasmed, and it was so good, _so good_ , and Thor would hate himself for weeks after this.

“Well, sweetheart? What do you think? Would a real brother be sucking you off?”

_It doesn’t mean anything,_ Loki wanted to scream. _You’re forcing him. You’re forcing both of us._

He moaned instead.

And when Thor hummed in response, when the vibrations spilled through Loki’s cock, Loki burst into pieces. He shot spend into Thor’s mouth, and Thor swallowed all of it as if he’d been dying of thirst. It was all too much, too fast--Thor’s mouth, and Thor’s hands on his hips, and the Grandmaster’s power ringing in his nerves.

Loki let himself drown in the post-coital bliss. He lay in the Grandmaster’s lap, unmoving and tired and numb.

“See,” the Grandmaster said in the silence, “and maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m missing something here, but from where I’m looking--if you were _really_ his brother, then you wouldn’t have liked it so much. You wouldn’t have been able to come.”

The Grandmaster’s hand waved towards his thighs, and Loki didn’t have to look to see the evidence. He could feel the Grandmaster’s power leaking away, but the rampant pleasure that had overtaken his body remained, leaving him with only one truth, one answer. It hadn’t been the Grandmaster arching his back or urging his moans or thrusting his hips--that pleasure, that sick, perverted, _incestuous_ pleasure, had been Loki’s and Loki’s alone.

A single sob erupted in his chest. When the tears followed, he slammed his eyes shut.

“Well? Am I wrong?”

“No,” Loki cried.

Because they weren’t really brothers--were they? No. Not anymore.

“Oh, good,” the Grandmaster said. “I’m glad we could get that settled.”

...

Thor paced back and forth near the windows. Every eleventh repetition, he glanced at Loki on the bed to check for movement.

The Grandmaster had left them alone hours ago, but Loki was still lying there, legs spread, palms upturned, and dried tears in crusted trails down his cheeks. His chest rose and fell in labored breaths, and his face was emptied of feeling. Maybe he could have been sleeping if only his eyes weren’t open and dull and staring hollow at the ceiling.

Thor didn’t remember what had happened, but he’d guessed when he’d woken with the taste of semen in the back of his throat and saliva on his chin.

( _What?_ the Grandmaster had said in the face of Thor’s wrath. _I kept my hands off. Isn’t that what you wanted?_ )

Staring at his brother, Thor shuddered. He’d sucked Loki off plenty of times before tonight, sometimes in the Grandmaster’s absence, sometimes even with Loki’s reluctantly given consent, but something was different now. Something else had happened in the gap of his memory. Something bad. And Thor didn’t know how to fix it in the silence.

(Because Loki didn’t like to talk about these things. Loki survived in silence. He built dams around his heart to keep out the damage, and drilling a hole into them, even to speak words of love, was the same as flooding him with everything else. If he felt anything, anything at all, then he would drown. He’d said so once many, many nights ago, and Thor only wished he’d remembered sooner.)

So he thought about things he _could_ do in the silence.

A few minutes later, he was filling the bathtub. Then he was carrying Loki across the room and lowering him into faintly warm water and soaking a washcloth to wipe his face of dried, crusted tears. Loki never said a word, but his eyes were alert, so Thor let him be. He washed Loki of sweat and saliva and dried come, and then when he was done, he dried Loki off and brought him back to bed.

They were all things a brother would do, and Thor prayed that he wouldn’t regret it later.

As he tucked the blankets up to Loki’s shoulders, he bent to kiss Loki’s forehead--an ancient relic of their childhood. Something that was still untainted by the poison of Sakaar. “I love you,” he said, because he couldn’t resist.

And when he turned to leave (to give Loki space), Loki’s hand caught his wrist.

Thor looked at him. Loki’s lower lip was quivering and his green eyes were wide and glassy in the dim light.

“I’m sorry,” Loki whispered. “I know you didn’t mean it. I know that you’re hurting too, and I shouldn’t have said—I shouldn’t have said those things. I’m sorry, Thor. I’m so sorr--”

“Shh,” Thor said and drew Loki in for a hug. His brother was thin--thinner than he’d ever been before--and fragile in his arms. But he was alive and talking (and not hating), and that was enough. “It’s okay. It’s going to be alright.”

Trembling, Loki clung to him, and for the first time in a long time, Thor believed what he’d said.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to follow me on [tumblr](http://loxxxlay.tumblr.com/)! ^_^


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